


Ghost

by sparklingdali, thecrystalmadness



Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: F/F, F/M, Post-Canon, Skrzetusko is Jan's family home
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-09-14 23:05:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16922163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklingdali/pseuds/sparklingdali, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecrystalmadness/pseuds/thecrystalmadness
Summary: Skrzetusko is visited by a phantom of the past.(for 'ghost' and 'candlelight' Yuletide Trylogia prompt)





	1. Chapter 1

There was some larger irony in the fact that when Helena sat up on the bed and saw Bohun standing awkardly at the door, she felt less startled than hearing his voice years back when she woke at Horpyna's cottage, singing songs about torments of love.

Then again, Bohun was very much alive back then. The shadow that was staring at her now looked cold and in places transparent. Only his eyes seemed alive and ablaze. After a few seconds when they just looked at each other, Bohun finally spoke, and Helena felt tremendous relief his voice sounded the same, that he didn't talk like some creature from the other world or made rasping noises because of the red wound visible on his chest.

"Please don't be afraid of me." He said it differently than the last time, pleadingly even. He haven't moved from his spot in the doorway as if he was asking to be invited or afraid that Helena could charm him away. The flame of the candle on the window trembled but then it stilled as if nothing happened.

“How… how did you die?” Helena wanted to know, needed even, to learn what was the force that managed to overpower someone like Jurko Bohun, who had nearly met death so many times, finally down.

“The Swedes know their way around their guns,” he lifted his eyebrows as if making a private joke with someone. Helena didn’t know what he’d expect she would know about Swedes. “They would never stand a chance against me with saber.” Bohun added and crossed hands over his chest, hiding the wound Helena has been involuntary staring at.

“Was that the glorious death you had always wanted?” Helena didn’t meant to sound like this, had no idea why she would say it. She knew she was upset, that she found it outrageous that after everything Bohun died in some minor squabble with mercenaries. Helena always did imagine hearing about it from someone, of Bohun leading some sort of suicidal attack or much worse visions of him dying on a stake somewhere in the cold.

“No. But it’s obvious I was never meant to get the things I wanted.”

Helena sharply turned to see him walking towards her, stopping in the middle of the room where light could properly find his face.

If anything else he looked slightly better than when he was lead by the rope into the courtyard, less haggard and on edge. Maybe slightly more tired. She could barely remember when his eyes weren’t underlined with dark circles and Helena knew him since he was barely a young man.

“I cannot hurt you. Not that I ever wanted to but now you are far more dangerous to me than I’m to you.”

“How am I dangerous to you? You are dead.”

“I have no power here. Nothing connects me to this place besides you.” He paused for a second and then he looked her into eyes. “If you wanted, you could send me away. And if you wished for me to never return, truly wished, then...”

He looked at her in expectation, as if Helena would just start exorsizing him right now. She admittedly did look on the cross hanging on the wall when he shown up at first.

“I’m sorry that not even after death you did find peace.” It was honest. Now that it was all over, finding safety in Jan’s arms in lands so distant to where she grew up but kinder to her than her home ever was, she truly wished Bohun could find some peace.

Shaking his head, Bohun said: “I don’t even know how to be at peace. Never did.”

“So you will be haunting me from now on?”

“Haunt you?” Bohun smiled sadly. “You can send me away anytime you want. I don’t think I can do any of the things you are afraid of.”

Helena wished it was true.

“Can anyone else see you?”

Bohun looked at her as if he knew exactly who she means. “Not really. They can feel but… it’s the same like when we were at the mound. Remember?”

Helena wanted to snap at him ‘no’. She had nightmares for weeks from their little trip.

“You know that there is something but it’s too distant for you to properly recognize it.”

He walked around the room and Helena’s eyes trailed how the rich clothes he wore turned different colors in according to what was besides him.

“Wait,” she said, “you were the thing that startled the horses this morning!”

Bohun lifted his eyes to her. “They get startled easily, yes. But I just had to try something. There was no harm done to them.”

Helena couldn’t shake the image of Bohun manifesting in Skrzetusko and just going straight to stables first to see if he can still ride a horse as a ghost. It was the kind of thing only Bohun would do.

At that moment the door opened and Jeremka, sleepy and still in his bed clothes, ran into the room. Helena thought her heart stopped for a while when Bohun’s eyes widened while looking at her son. She hugged Jeremka, pulling him to her chest as if to protect him from that gaze.

Jeremka was strangely demure today but when he shyly turned towards Bohun, Helena knew her heart truly did stop, hair standing up on the nape of her neck, as Jeremka whispered:

“Mom, who is he?”

Helena wished Bohun was gone and in that instant he disappeared. She could see his face twist in grief for the last few seconds but she knew it was no use.

He would be back after all.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Jan’s heart stopped when he saw him in the stables, reaching with a hand towards a horse, a dark and rather temperamental Arabian separated from other animals, who kept trying to bite his hand and grew frustrated when his muzzle just passed through Bohun’s outstretched fingers.

“What are you doing here?” Jan said and just then Bohun’s head turned slowly and he knew the truth. The cold night air swept through, making the stables even more chilly, taking all the warmth from Jan’s bones. Bohun ignored him without a word, his unfazed eyes only for a moment trailing towards him and then back to the horse.

“Has Helena already seen you?”

There was no cloud of air coming out of Bohun’s mouth when it turned into a wry smile and he said: “Yes.”

Jan walked closer, fear of the dead be damned. Bohun couldn’t be more deadly like this than when he was alive but all rational thought left him when he finally stood in front of him and there was no denial of the transparent form he now possessed. Flickers of dust fell lazily around and through his body.

“Why have you done it?” Bohun stared at him and Jan couldn’t help but frown.

“You came here to ask that? You surely must know the answer already.”

“I must know? And how? You haven’t said anything when you dragged me out. You haven’t… you never said why you did it.” There was a great distress in his features and desperation in Bohun’s eyes. As if he would accept any answer than the self-evident one. That he didn’t want Bohun to die at Beresteczko.

Jan stared at him. “Please tell me it’s not me that is keeping you here.”

Bohun turned swiftly towards to him, anger flashing in his eyes. Jan could almost believe he was alive in that moment if light from the holes in the roof wasn’t changing the colors on his figure.

“What have you said to Helena?”

“She sent me away when… when the child…,” he seemed at loss as if a great sadness came over him. Pacing on the spot, he finally turned to Jan. “You named your son after Jeremi.” It wasn’t an accusation.

“Without him, he would never be born.”

“I took over some of his lands before I died. He saw me before  _he_  died.”

It was a disease, not Bohun that brought Jeremi down. Jan tried to not think about what a celebration there must have been at Bohun’s camp. How Chmielnicki must have enjoyed a death of such a man. There would be no other like him ever again. It was enough for Jan to want to turn away from Bohun’s ghost and go back to Helena, the image of her outstretched hands and lips that would kiss away every last worry he had.

“You won’t hurt Jeremka. Or frighten him.” Those weren’t questions.

“Do you think me some kind of monster to hurt a helpless child?” Bohun whispered.

“No, I don’t think that at all. I don’t even think you are here to hurt me. But I cannot fathom why you didn’t pass. You seemed all too happy to be ridden out of life.” He remembered Bohun with a rope around his neck and a death wish on his lips. How he tried to taunt him with words about going straight back to Chmielnicki, the twitch in his face when Jan reached for the rope as if he expected him to strike a captured man.

Jan remembered fearing he wouldn’t be able to strike him even if he had to.

“Would you believe me if I told you I was afraid of death?”

“Never,” Jan said immediately and Bohun smiled, a first honest smile Jan seen on his face since that fateful night in Rozlogi. It made him, out of all things, sad.

“I had hoped to see her again,” his face was turned away from Jan. “I didn’t imagine her with open arms when she sees me, and I certainly didn’t imagine our reunion ending with her loving me.” His voice was breaking, Jan realized with horror. “I just wanted her to look at me one last time like she used to before everything. To not see… whatever she saw when she looked at me afterwards.  A murderer. Someone who would wish to hurt her.”

Jan had wondered how she looked at him back then but all he knew when he met her was ‘he’s a terrible man’ and the fearful gazes in Bohun’s direction. Only later he found out it wasn’t fear of Bohun but a fear what he would do to him. There was a man before Jan who paid for taking likeness to her with his own life.

“So you are here to apologize?”

Bohun shrugged, finally turning back to him. “After she forgives me I will be gone, I think.”

Jan had thought it was a cruel thing to ask something like that from Helena. Even crueler that she will now have to face him as a punishment for not finding it in her heart to give Bohun absolution.

“But I’m fine with being here. It’s probably better than whatever afterlife I had prepared for me. This is no illusion. And I can see that she is happy. I hate you for it but you really made her happy. She’s a different person here.”

Jan had thought of his home being haunted by Bohun, forever, and had to swallow hard.

“I have to go.”

“Of course.”

 

-

“Odd things have been happening while you were gone,” Helena said while putting the fur in which she has been warming up over the foot-board of their bed.

“Like Bohun’s ghost manifesting? That kind of odd things?” Jan said in a seemingly careless voice.

Helena froze with her fingers still grasping the wolf skin, staring at him with an open mouth.

“I had thought I was going insane. I have nightmares about him sometimes,” she said, eyes still wide. “But Jeremka… he came to me and asked...”

She looked close to tears.

Jan immediately went to her to embrace her. She held onto him tight, fingers digging into the folds of his coat.

“I’m sorry that this is happening to you.”

“But I’m glad that I’m not imagining things. It’s terrible to remember him but to have hallucinations….” She couldn’t be going insane now. She spent much time constantly plagued by the images of being killed or violated so why couldn’t she feel at peace now when nobody was set to hurt her? Why she constantly thought about the nights in Horpyna’s cottage where she sometimes didn’t pray to God to be found but to end her suffering once and for all? It was like the memories couldn’t stop pouring into her consciousness, rising up from the deep waters to remind her that all peace could be easily disturbed. She had been at a simple kind of peace at Rozlogi once, even if it wasn’t a happy one.

“I will try to talk to him tomorrow. I will ask him that if there’s any goodness left in his heart, he will leave you alone.”

Helena thought about the words Bohun said. That if she wishes, truly wishes, for him to be gone, he will be.

She could never tell Jan, couldn’t even begin to explain, why she was unable to do that. That despite the hatred she surely felt for him in the past, Bohun was one of the ghosts that was meant to haunt her forever, even when his soul left the land of the living.

That's how a million years ago, a young Cossack boy was dragged into Rozlogi by her brothers, looking at everything with wide and hungry eyes, barely grasping the concept that he could be welcomed somewhere. How he looked at her once, not with adoration or longing, how he used to later on, but with an understanding that broke all the barriers she knew Bohun believed existed between them because he was born out of nothing. How he knew what it was like to not be wanted, and for that reason spoke to her with kindness for which she was as a child almost humiliatingly grateful.

Horpyna once told her there was a herb that made people forget everything. Helena wished she remembered what it was, desperate to drink it and never remember again.


	3. Chapter 3

The boy was sitting on a soft rug and playing with a carved horse, the kind Bohun had often dreamed of having as a child. It had wheels on each side and he was pushing it around on the wooden floor, making squeaky noises. The little wooden soldier was in his other hand, slipping down from his fingers and clanking to the floor several times but always being carefully picked up right after.

Jeremka looked at him with his dark eyes, pointing at the figurine. ‘Tato,’ he grinned.

“Is he a hussar like dad?” asked Bohun, crouching down. The child seemed to be deep in thought.

“Doesn’t have wings,” he added sadly. “Dad said… dad has wings.”

“They don’t always wear wings. Your dad didn’t always have them.”

“No. No.” Jeremka shook his head decisively. “He has them. Always.” He frowned at Bohun, as if he suspected him of telling lies. “In battle!”

Bohun found himself liking Jeremi Skrzetuski who although was a rather faithful copy of his father, his mother’s temper rouse in him often enough to amuse Bohun. He perhaps shouldn’t have found it so laughable that the boy was currently trying to push the wooden horse through him, a frown on his face deepening when he again failed as Bohun could side-step him with an ease of a dead swordsman.

“Is it a surrender then?” Bohun asked seriously, trying to prevent the corners of his mouth from twitching.

“NO!” the boy shouted, lunging again towards him, horse in hand. He finally managed to pass through Bohun who found it a very strange sensation but gave him a few seconds to realize that he succeeded before stepping away.

“You win and I’m dead,” Bohun said playfully to speak over the voice in his head that talked about the boy's first slain Cossack. Not even he appreciated his own dark humor at the moment and Jeremka's namesake was of no help.

“You are dead!” the boy proclaimed victoriously.

“That I am.”

Jeremka grinned at him and ran back for his toy soldier.

-

Jan was a little disturbed by how easily they got used to Bohun appearing in Skrzetusko over the next few weeks. But appearing was the wrong word for it. He never just manifested out of thin air and despite the transparency he didn’t walk through walls. Usually, Bohun stood in front of doors until they opened on their own accord, which unsettled Jan a lot more than when Bohun lost his patience and simply kicked them open. It worked just as well unless they were on a padlock.

During the first month, Bohun slowly familiarized himself with the extension of his powers as a ghost. He was seen only by Helena, Jan and to the unhappiness of both – Jeremka.

“There is no reason for him to see you,” said Jan flatly when they were walking around the estate.

“Children are very sensitive. I have a feeling that the handmaiden’s daughter can see me as well. _She_ never talks to me though.”

Jan stopped abruptly. “What did you just say?”

Bohun came to a halt a few meters away as if to prepare for a possible attack. “I’m not frightening him. But it would be odd to pretend I’m not here when he can clearly see me.”

Jan came closer, voice calm but dangerously low. “What have you told him?”

There was a pause, the man next to him clearly avoiding his eyes. Jan’s own heart raced faster and faster the longer the silence stretched.

“I told him I’m dead but that he doesn’t need to fear me…,” Jan saw Bohun’s Adam apple bob up and down as he swallowed, “...because I’m a friend of his mother.”

“That’s…,” Jan couldn’t for a moment fully grasp the irony... the audacity. He laughed humorlessly and shook his head. “That’s an odd way to describe it.”

“What did you expect?” Bohun started walking again, his coat swirling around, making Jan quicken his pace. “I kidnapped your mother, boy, and she hates me! I was shot in the chest and in the hours I waited for death I couldn’t help but entertain myself with a thought of what would happen if I got the chance to talk to her. He already has enough nightmares!”

Jan knew, of course. The question was how Bohun did. He chased away the images of a man bleeding to death on a muddy road and spoke:

“I thought we had an understanding. That you will keep away from…”

“From Helena! Yes. As I had said – I avoid her,” lied Bohun, who usually only watched her from afar, hoping she would notice him anyway. Knowing Helena, she wouldn’t acknowledge him even if she did.

“So he still cries at night? _Halzska_ told the nursemaid to wake her if she can’t get him to calm down.”

Bohun shook his head. “She’s old, half the time she doesn’t hear him.” He didn’t say that it physically pained him to hear the boy cry himself to sleep. What was he afraid of anyway with a roof over his head and his mother in the next room?

They nearly reached the village, Jan looking up to see that it started to snow. The snowflakes passed through Bohun, making Jan wish the winter came a little later.

“Why do you think he has the nightmares?”

Bohun knew there was an accusation somewhere in his voice but ignored it and shrugged. “No idea. But he has been getting better. I…”

“What?” Jan turned to him but the ghostly form of Bohun hid his face away as if embarrassed somehow.

“I told him that I will keep watch so he can sleep,” Bohun pointed at the sword on his hip. “I don’t think he realizes that I’m not much of a use.”

Jan didn’t know what to do. He would have to talk about this with Helena whose reaction wouldn’t be that hard to guess. It unsettled even Jan that Jeremka apparently took comfort in the presence of a dead Cossack. Despite his belief that Bohun wouldn’t intentionally hurt him, he still didn’t consider him a person that should spend time around his child. The image of an older Jeremi running to Sicz, enthralled by stories of danger and adventure… Jan shivered.

He turned back to stare at his home, the estate that had been left by his father. A lot of work had to be done and Jan felt regret that he wouln’t be there to oversee it. Still, he comforted himself that Helena would do what was necessary, proving during the first few months he left her alone, that after everything she went through, taking care of the estate would be an easy enough feat.

“I used to get bored sometimes,” she had admitted once to him with a smile. She had been carrying Jeremka in her arms, rocking him lightly. “But not anymore.”

Jan swallowed at the thought that the next time he left, Helena would have a different kind of company.

-

Jan breathed in the scent of crisp morning air as he felt the familiar crunching of snow that piled over night under his feet. A letter had come, stating he might be called back earlier but so far it seemed that the holidays with his family weren’t in any outward danger. He had been waiting for a word from Michal but the longer he waited, the more he was sure that his friend still stayed close to the unrest. It was better this way, Jan knew that the most miserable boredom was one of the soldier.

When he got inside the stables, he was greeted by a teenage son of one of his guards.

“Hello, sir.” He gave the black horse a desperate look when he saw Jan approach. “There’s something wrong with him,” he said with an apologetic face. “He has been cranky since this morning. I don’t think it’s his day.”

Jan walked towards the box to examine the animal. There wasn’t anything amiss and the horse reached to sniff his hand as if it was trying to prove the boy was over-reacting. A terrible feeling came over Jan, hair standing on his neck.

“Since this morning, you say?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve never seen him like this. I think he would be left best alone until whatever devil came over him-”

The horse neighed loudly towards the boy.

“Oh Christ,” said Jan, staring at the horse. Its intelligent eyes gazed at him questioningly. Then it struck the small wooden doors with its nuzzle and turned its head to Jan in expectation.

As in a dream, Jan opened it. When he reached for the halter, the horse wrenched his head away and snorted in annoyance, raking with his hooves.

“That’s my best horse, you know.”

Jan was nearly thrown to the ground as the animal ran past him through the open stable doors. He moved quickly behind it but now it was in the open yard, galloping in circles. Suddenly it reared up on its hind legs and Bohun was thrown on the ground, laughing like a madman. The horse now, without any ghost disturbing his mind, slowed down to a stroll.

Jan whistled and it came back to him, looking almost relieved to see its master. He stroke the horse’s mane to calm it down as Bohun stood again on his own transparent legs, still grinning.

“Surprised?” he cocked his eyebrow.

“I see you are getting very bored here.”

The man in front of him frowned. “Have you not seen what I managed? I was inside the animal! How strange to... to feel again...” There was wonder in his eyes, his chest heaving from the effort, although Jan couldn’t imagine exactly what for. Ghosts didn’t need to breath. “I…,” Bohun seemed confused and caught off guard by his words. “I didn’t know….what I was losing.” He had been staring over Jan until now and when their eyes met, it was painfully clear that for the first time in weeks Bohun understood the irreversibility of his station. He knew he had died but not until now did he seem to truly understand what it meant to be dead. The shock and horror spread towards Jan, for a while almost making it his own.

Bohun then bolted towards the forest, paying no mind to Jan or the horse, nearly passing through the watching stable boy who eyed his master carefully.

“I take him to the pastures every day. But if he’s used to long trips, I can see how it could be boring.”

Only with a delay Jan realized what the boy was talking about.

“That could be it, yes. I had planned to take him out myself today but I think he deserves a bit of peace after this stunt. Come back to the kitchen before lunch, I will have the servants give you something for him.”

Jan felt kinship with any living thing that had their life disturbed by Bohun’s existence. He wondered where he went but didn’t follow him. As always when he didn’t know what to do, he went to find Helena, who usually spent the noon with Jeremka and one of the older maids with a child of the same age. They were sitting on the wooden bench near the kitchen, talking excitedly. When they noticed Jan, the maid disappeared as quickly as smoke, flashing a grin towards Helena that made Jan lift his eyebrows.

“You better sit down, my dear husband.”

Jan smiled and inched closer. “Why?”

“Sit, sit!” Helena pointed at the bench. She grasped his hands when he sat next to her.

“I think… I think I know,” said Jan, excitement and happiness flooding him when he saw her reddened cheeks. He felt so much love that he thought he was going to drown in it.

Helena saw the change in his eyes and grasping his hands a little tighter, asked slyly: “And how so?”

“Because… when the…,” Jan stammered out. “The cuckoo.”

Helena laughed and it was the greatest sound Jan ever heard, like the bells on horse’s necks during the winter. “Really? The cuckoo? Not me being sick in our bedroom twice this week.”

“That also seemed like a sign.”

He seized her in his arms, wanting to speak but feeling at loss of words. In the end he whispered in her ear: “Thank you. I couldn’t have been more happy.”

When Jan more or less came to terms with the fact that he would become father for the second time, trying to unsuccessfully pinpoint if he was going to be home when the baby was born, Helena interrupted him.

“We can tell Jeremka now. So he can be excited for a little sibling!”

She saw Jan smile kindly. “Just to think there’s going to be two of them running around.”

“Jeremka!” Helena shouted towards the kitchen. “Come here!” Then a little mischievously, she added: “Daddy has a surprise for you!”

“That’s more of your surprise,” laughed Jan.

The nursemaid came with Jeremka in tow after a while. He was holding the wooden horse in his hand and a sweet bread in the other, crumbs of sugar dusting the corners of his mouth. He stared curiously at Jan and then at Helena who urged him to come closer, lifting him up so he could sit on her lap. Jan caught the bread slipping from his chubby hand before it could land on the floor.

“Are you wondering what the surprise is?” Jan asked, putting the bread back into his hand.

Jeremka nodded enthusiastically. He seemed to be a little bewildered by the situation. Any other time he spent with Jan, he liked to ramble about the things he got up to during the day and imaginary fights he had won, and Jan humored him with impressed ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’, even if he sometimes had to control himself very hard to not laugh at the things he came up with.

He looked seriously into Jeremka’s dark eyes. “You will have a little brother or a sister in a few months.”

Jeremka stared at them in incomprehension, mouth agape.

“You will have someone to play with all the time,” Helena added, encouragingly. “Perhaps a little brother? You could teach him all the things you had learned, and play soldiers together.”

But their son frowned more and more, shifting on Helena’s lap unhappily for a while, until she let him stand on the ground.

“I play with Jurko,” he said, eyes red as if he were ready to burst into tears. Then he ran away back to the kitchens.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a Christmas Event at https://yuletide-trylogia.tumblr.com/ which you are all welcomed to join :)


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